(The global temperature record from 1880 through 2014 as provided by NOAA. As is plainly visible, the temperature increase since 1880 has been extraordinary — particularly during the years following 1975 as greenhouse gas buildup rates rapidly climbed to unprecedented levels. Image source: NOAA Global Analysis.)

Those living in this time of increasingly rarefied and weirded weather may as well be named, not by the colloquially meaningless terms generations Y and Z, but by the more contextually appropriate monikers — generation climate destabilization (Y) and generation climate chaos (Z). It’s worth noting that such names may seem unfair due to the fact that neither generation made the choices that would force them to experience such severe disruptions. No, instead they were the unwitting victims of choices made by the many previous generations who failed or neglected to rein in the power of the fossil fuel giants before climate catastrophes could begin to take hold. These new generations, instead, are the unfortunate ones who would inhabit the years when humankind left any climate context it had ever experienced — at least since the dawn of human civilization itself, and possibly since the birth of humankind altogether. The first of many generations we have doomed to face the long, bad years of a worsening climate disruption.

This year, the year of 2015, is shaping up to be the most recent worst of a hot bunch. And October of this year is looking like a horrendous outlier hot month. A month testing the new extreme range of record heat that continues to build throughout the global climate system. A ramping warmth we have no chance of stopping at all unless we also swiftly halt the burning of fossil fuels.

October of 2015 Starting to Come in as Hottest Month Ever Recorded

As I type these words that represent my 799th plea for the global community to act decisively on climate change, to turn away from the wretched industrial interests that are dragging increasingly large chunks of our world into a climate chaos of ever-worsening scope, the temperature where I live in Gaithersburg Maryland is a balmy 66 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s about 8 degrees hotter than the typical high temperature for today. Overall, the month of November will come in, if forecasts are correct, between 1 and 2 degrees C hotter than average for my location. This may not seem like much. But since the region has been sitting in a trough zone — with storms and frontal systems tending to drive in from the north and bring in Canadian and Arctic air, these continuous high temperature departures seem rather odd. Especially when one considers them from the meteorological and climate perspective.

As we look at the global temperature anomaly map for today, we can see that most places around the globe are experiencing above average heat for even the hotter than normal 1979 to 2000 base period. Sections of Asia, Alaska, East Greenland and parts of the Southern Ocean are the noted exceptions. But when one considers that this snapshot is in the context of a 1979-2000 average that, as we can seen in the NOAA graph (top of this post) was much hotter than normal, we begin to realize that even most of the white and light blue sections should be showing up in various shades of orange. And this is especially true when we consider how much the world has warmed up since the late 1800s.

Most ominous, however, is the massive bloom of heat over the Arctic spiking into the range of 36 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) above average. This heat spike, directly over a section of the Arctic that some have noted could become a hotbed of oceanic and permafrost methane and CO2 feedback to human heating of the globe, is yet one more plainly visible burst of what is called polar amplification. A kind of tilting of heat toward the poles as the Earth warms up. An unevenly rapid heating of the regions that contain most of the world’s ice capable of raising sea levels. An ominous warming of a zone that contains a great portion of the world’s vast carbon stores. Extreme warming where we want to see it least.

And it is all happening in a time that is certainly the hottest in the 125-135 year global climate records of the major reporting agencies. A period likely hotter than during any time in the Holocene. A period potentially hotter than at any time during the last 110,000 years.

For according to Japan’s Meteorological Agency, October of 2015 came in as the hottest month ever recorded in all of its 125 year global climate record. The departure at +0.53 C above the 1981-2000 baseline, +0.85 C above the 20th Century average, and about +1.25 C above temperatures during the late 1890s is far into a range that would well be considered more normal for the Eemian interglacial occurring between 110,000 and 130,000 years ago than for any normal time during the current interglacial. It is also +0.02 C above September of 2015’s new record high set just last month. A continuation of this year’s trend of extreme warming in Japan’s global monitor.

(Global average temperatures for October of 2015 were the hottest for any month in all of Japan’s 125 year global climate record. Image source. Japan Meteorological Agency.)

There’s quite a lot of heat in this graph. For what we see is a temperature range that’s about 0.75 C away from the UN’s so called ‘safe limit’ of 2 C total warming above 1880s values. And what we also see is that the last monster El Nino year of 1997-1998 is increasingly being left in the dust. In fact, 1997 doesn’t show up as any of the top 5 record hot years for October. According to JMA, the new top five record holders are now: 1st. 2015 (+0.53°C), 2nd. 2014 (+0.34°C), 3rd. 2003 (+0.24°C), 4th. 2006 (+0.23°C), and 5th. 2012 (+0.22°C). 1997 now holds the place of sixth hottest on record for October at +0.21 C above the 1981-2000 benchmark or around 0.32 C behind October of 2015. A widening gap that plainly shows that though strong El Ninos have the climatological force to drive new records, the underlying driver pushing the entire record inexorably higher is an unimaginable pace of burning fossils fuels pushing an equally unprecedented rate of global greenhouse gas accumulation.

Pushing us to higher and higher extreme temperature thresholds that are straining the climate and geophysical Earth Systems with which we are currently accustomed to the breaking point.

wili

No chance at all. Not with the year already so far above previous years. Not with Nino 3.4 hitting a record +3.0 C in the NOAA weekly measure. It’s not a question of record breaker. It’s a question of how far beyond previous records this year jumps. It’s a question of whether 2016 is also a record breaking year. It’s a question of how much longer this El Nino lasts and how much stronger it becomes.

Something to think about —

During the early Miocene, when global greenhouse gas levels were comparable to those we are currently starting to explore and will enter within the next handful of decades without major crash reductions in carbon emissions, the the Pacific Ocean was in a state of constant El Nino. If you look at the heat anomaly signature of the Pacific today, it is not only one of record El Nino, but of an extraordinarily strong positive PDO. The heat in NE Pacific would tend to lengthen and strengthen El Nino, as we are seeing now, as it blocks the atmospheric responses that tend to take El Nino down and switch to La Nina. Perhaps it’s a foretaste of what’s to come. Nature’s hint that a change in the way things operate in the ocean/atmosphere heat exchange system is currently underway.

Trenberth has been proven right in spades. Deep and middle ocean warming was absolutely coming back to haunt us. It’s haunting us now like the Dickens.

Mark from OZ

Ruh Roh!
Sea surface temps exceeded 15c on 07- Nov near Svalbard. And all that ice melt pouring off
Greenland and spreading across the ‘top’ of the sea water actually ‘traps’ the warmer water underneath. Aerosols also contribute to the cooling seen in the sea surface temp anomalies.

According to the METOP satellite sensor, we do currently have an overburden of methane at the 10,000 to 30,000 foot levels in that region, as in much of the Arctic and near Arctic. I’d hesitate to call this out as ‘unequivocal proof’ of methane feedback. But what I would say is that it’s a decent level of proxy evidence that there’s something going on up there. Ever since I’ve started monitoring this in 2012, these sensors have been showing an overburden in this region. The signal may be amplified due to the fact that the Arctic atmosphere is thinner and a lower volume of emission is necessary to show overburden. But even if this is the case, there does seem to be something going on in this region that is enough to keep spiking methane readings there. We don’t see a similar overburden in the southern polar region (though we have had some environmental methane releases there). Nor do we see overburden at the equator where we’ve had some rather extreme wildfire emissions recently.

Furthermore, the METOP measure, which is confirmed by earlier measures such as AIRS, has some confirmation from the (admittedly very sparse) ground monitoring stations, and some confirmation from observational studies in the ESAS (very controversial), thermokarst lake studies, various permafrost studies (including a recent one in Alaska), and a number of Arctic wildfire studies. There is some question as to whether or not methane emissions for the region are currently a near proxy to that of the 20th Century. If so, one wonders if the methane overburden for the region has been going on for some time. Others, including Arctic observational specialists have identified the potential of 100 billion tons or more of carbon feedback coming from the Arctic this Century due to human forced warming of the region. Such a feedback would certainly be an increase over current rates of Arctic carbon emission and over 20th Century rates as well. With a ramp up to these rates expected by at least a good section of the science, and with warming happening so rapidly in the Arctic, it is reasonable to conjecture that we are at the start of such feedbacks now. However, the broader science has not currently reached a consensus on that subject.

Finally, there is still quite a lot of work to be done on the issue of where the greenhouse gas overburden we see in the Arctic satellite record may be coming from. There has been work by major NOAA scientists that seems to indicate that certain regions (like the Laptev Sea) show molar fractions that indicate much of the methane is coming from biological emissions that are typically associated with wetlands. Such data would point toward permafrost and tundra thaw related emissions. However, we don’t have anywhere near a total picture of the Arctic from this or other perspectives. We are now in the process of trying to determine the shape of the elephant by looking at its feet and its tail and maybe a tusk or two.

Regardless, I’d call all that’s going on in the Arctic very troubling. And it’s my opinion that we are probably at the start of Arctic feedbacks from various carbon stores. You can’t warm those stores up as much as we have without some level of consequence. And the real argument right now, in my view, is not over whether or not this is happening. In my view the data will find in hind sight that it was happening. The real argument is over how much feedback we will see and where that feedback will ultimately come from.

redskylite

Well keeping it realistic is needed now, I just looked at NOAA and the upwards CO2 is ever heading upward (at over 3ppm yesterda). Not surprising with events in Indonesia. Despite all the developments with renewables no progress made in putting the carbon cycle back in balance, and you need to be an optimist to imagine that happening.

Without renewables we’d certainly be emitting more and we’d certainly be worse off. This notion that adding renewables isn’t helping is pure bunk. The thing we should be focusing on is that we’re not adding renewables fast enough and we’re not doing the other things like increasing efficiency fast enough and we’re not really working too hard on transitioning our farming and land use to lower carbon emissions fast enough. All these efforts will be needed. But continuously and falsely pointing out that one isn’t lowering emissions when China and India are still adding coal plants and the world is still adding more and more oil burning vehicles to the roads and even the wealthiest nations of the world are still adding gas plants is nothing more than a red herring.

Without renewables we’d be billions more tons of carbon in the hole. So to imply anything other than that is complete nonsense.

The weekly departure of SST from average in this region hit +3.0°C (5.4°F) over the past week, NOAA announced in their November 16 El Niño update. This exceeds the previous 1-week record warmth in the equatorial Pacific of 2.8°C above average set during the week of November 26, 1997;

Colorado Bob

RS –
I’ve always been a sucker for the phrase , ” As I type this “.
So –
” As I type this “, dew points at Canadian, Texas today hit 60F degrees , with a 30 mph wind out of the South. Temps were in the low 70’s F. This is important because a squall line is forming , and Canadian is in the heart of the threat box. A member on Dr. Masters latest (link above), posted the forecast maps for this event . Looks to be a giant derecho.

A derecho (/dəˈreɪtʃoʊ/, from Spanish: derecho [deˈɾetʃo], “straight”) is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a land-based, fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms. Derechos can cause hurricane force winds, tornadoes, heavy rains, and flash floods.

The first storms are moving at 60 mph along the line, and dropping 2 in. hail stones.

It’s going to be a very violent night in Senator Snowball’s home state, and Texas.

Yeah. Saw the precip maps pointing toward a 5 + inch rainfall event for some regions. Looks like the related tornado outbreak has hit about 40 so far. Pretty big event and the first of likely many more to come:

Griffin

Is it just me, or does it really seem like temps are making jumps that are higher than expected? It just seems like both ocean and air temps are really pushing the upper boundaries of the warnings from earlier posts by you Robert. This is serious acceleration.

Mblanc

Matt

Down here in Australia we are getting set for the first major summer heatwave (oh wait it’s not summer yet)http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-16/heatwave-builds-across-australia-this-week/6944702
Unfortunately at the moment my countdown for Marble Bar breaking the record of 160 consecutive days over 100F has hit a hurdle as the site has had 8 days of missing data! it should be on 45 days in a row by now, but am unsure if we will get data for the missing days?
The heat engine of our continent is building, last month Marble Bar came in at an average temp of 41.5C a staggering 3.9C above average and this month is already averaging 43.2C around 2C above and we have had the cooler half of the month! All this heat has to go somewhere…….

Colorado Bob

Matt

Ha Ha🙂 I wouldn’t call it work. I love stats!
My efforts are trivial when compared to that of Mr Scribbler and yourself, in fact a hell of a lot of people on this thread!
So many events happening around the world I just wouldn’t know about if it were not for this site and the efforts of those contributing to the comments section!

Seconding Bob’s statement here. Excellent digging, Matt. I’ve really gotten a lot from everyone’s first-hand observations of events where they are. And I really appreciate so many people coming in from all over the globe to chime in.

Colorado Bob

climatehawk1

mlparrish

CB “Nature is linear right up to the point when it isn’t , then it rips your head off”.

Just for interest I calculated figures using as a basis the observed ice core values mentioned by James Hansen in ‘Storms of My Grandchildren’, i.e. 100 ppm CO2 (180-280) and 5C temperature change determine an ice age. To skip straight to the results:
437 ppm CO2 – the level above 280 corresponding to another 5C increase in temperature. With added methane and CFCs we must be above that.
7C temperature increase – what is expected using the current CO2e (about 500 per me, but could be higher if the methane multiplier is above 86).
I desperately want there to be something wrong with this method, as I mentioned earlier. It’s just that the rapidity of the changes and arctic anomalies are so out of hand we are running out of descriptives in the English language.

Syd Bridges

I meant JMA not NOAA twice. But maybe two branches of NOAA are involved. Of course, the other co-conspirators include the climate itself and the laws of physics, especially quantum mechanics and radiation physics. Come to think of it, Reality is also a co-conspirator.

The records are coming in fast and furious. We have a record for Nino 3.4 from NOAA, JMA and NASA — new all time global temperature records for the month… The next four months are going to see some insane weather.

Colorado Bob

Well I remember when you used to look so good
And I did everything that I possibly could for you
We used to ride around all over town
But they’re puttin’ you down for bein’ around with me

But you can go ahead if you want to
‘Cause I ain’t got no papers on you

In the middle of the summer I had a job bein’ a plumber
Just to pass till the fall it was you I wanna ball all day
Ah-we were walkin’ along, honey, hand in hand
I’m a-thinkin’ of you, mama, when you’re thinkin’ of another man

But you can go ahead if you want to
‘Cause I ain’t got no papers on you
No I don’t, I ain’t got no papers on myself

All alone on the bone when I didn’t have a home
When I saw the way I was and I knew where I was supposed to be
I was twitchin’ so I turned and it’s really hard to learn
That everyone I saw was just another part of me

But you can go ahead if you want to
‘Cause nobody’s got no papers on you
No babe, it’s just a falsehood

Colorado Bob

The subject of Aztecs vs Cortez came up. “Who was most foul” ?
The Aztec priests skinned their first victims , and wore their skins as they conducted the ritual.

This was based on the idea that the Sun would not come up, if they failed to do this.
I was reminded of that when Paris came to us.
Then this morning , I saw Pat Robertson . Calling for killing every Muslim jihadie . Pat didn’t say how to winnow out the herd. It seems we are in a world where all of us are wearing the skins of our victims.

Colorado Bob

The Aztec priests , that for my money is real “old time religion”. And when Cortez showed up with a hand full of men , tens of thousands of their neighbors fell in right behind him.
And we have never seen that religious idea since then.

– Thanks, Adam.
It’s quite disturbing that so much visual, or perceptual filtering takes place among observers.
When seeing my doctor in Santa Barbara there was a nice family photo of the doctor and his smiling family at some smoggy overlook in Sedona, AZ. The pace was smothered in pink and gray particulate but everyone was smiling — while I cringed.
Modern day Homo saps…

entropicman

It’s a big jump regardless. Earlier guidance had us coming in at 1.01 C in NASA. So this is hotter than expected. November could be hotter. In fact, all of the next 4 months are likely to hit some pretty amazing extremes given with we’re seeing in the Equatorial Pacific at the moment.

danabanana

“No, instead they were the unwitting victims of choices made by the many previous generations who failed or neglected to rein in the power of the fossil fuel giants before climate catastrophes could begin to take hold.”

We’re all victims.

The choices already made and the choices that we will make are all based, not in rational arguments, but on keeping dopamine flowing. In the case of CO2, the fossil fuel industry has ensured that their (DP) flow kept going in spite of the many years of scientific awareness of the Greenhouse effect.

It is generally said that is all about greedy people, but in the end it is Dopamine that drives Greed, not the people themselves.

“Most types of reward increase the level of dopamine in the brain, and most addictive drugs increase dopamine neuronal activity”

I happen to have a DP deficiency which puts me in a unique position as I rarely (if ever) got hooked in any of the dopamine driven destructive human activities. Unfortunately, like all addictive behaviours, accepting that there is a problem is the first step but with DP this may prove nearly impossible to accept.

“”The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.””

Paul

danabanana

…we carry on this downward spiral, carry on filling the environment with highly toxic and dangerous pollutants for the sake of having a ‘comfortable life’.

The first change should be rewards for the right actions. To alter how we as society reward. Right now we reward greed, mass consumerism, profits, growth, the self (Social media, Vacuous Celebritism) but punish or deny rewards for renewables, recycling, being eco-friendly, etc.

Greg

7 billion people can change most non-biochemically driven behaviors, even seemingly addictive ones, with the right rewards and costs. Just got back from a couple of days at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank West Virginia which lies in an unusual electromagnetic quiet zone that extends beyond the valley :

It’s the kind of place where you have a taste of a probable future for a developed society where extremely high technology meets low. I couldn’t use a cell phone, microwave, even a digital camera to take pix. No spark plugs in ICE engines on grounds. Residents in the valley are accustomed to it and yet benefit in a myriad of ways, mostly social. Yes, a gov’t spy truck has to plow the valley looking for lawbreakers which are easy to spot as a cell phone puts out 3 watts and the observatory itself can detect a billionth of a billionth of a millionth of a watt from outer space. The right incentives and fees/punishments and human behavior can change rapidly. As for myself I dropped my phone in my lap immediately while talking to my wife (“later honey, sorry”) as I crossed from Virginia into West Virginia and right after the border I saw a local patrol car. I remembered a friend got a big fine last month under the new no cell law while driving there. Truly sensible law really to protect people from idiots like me. Carbon, and other heat trapping gas, polluting will become legally and culturally ugly in our lifetimes, and we will change many, many behaviors as a result. The incentivizing of carbon capture will be the new greed. It will help immeasurably to all be in this ride together.